Quent Cordair

BORN IN 1964 in southern Illinois, QUENT CORDAIR was raised in an insular, fundamentalist religious sect. In his childhood, he fell in love with books at the local library, a treasured door to the outside world. After an enlistment in the U.S. Marines, he launched his writing career, with his first short story published in 1991 by the Atlantean Press Review. Attempts to sell his second book door to door failed. To support his writing, he waited tables, worked as a security guard, stocked groceries, and stuffed envelopes on the graveyard shift at a mail-processing center, among other sundry jobs. Teaching himself how to paint, he began taking portrait commissions from his easel in a local park. After exhibiting in street fairs for two years, he opened his own gallery in 1996. Expanding and relocating in 2008 to Napa, California, Quent Cordair Fine Art represents the work of more than two dozen Romantic Realist painters and sculptors of international renown. With the gallery now managed by his wife, Linda Cordair, the author's attentions are turned fully to his writing. His acclaimed short stories, screenplays and novels are drawn from his lifetime of experience and interests in romance, adventure, individualism, religion, history, politics, philosophy and art. The Cordairs live in Napa with their cats, Lexie and Sadie, and their border collie, Mollie.

Two guys in a bar.
Guy #1: So, I had this dream last night.
Guy #2: Yeah?
Guy #1: Yeah, it was a bad dream. I was hit by a car and I died.
Guy #2: Sorry, man. That’s pretty bad.
Guy #1: No, that’s not the bad part. So I got hit by a car and I died, and my wife was really sad for a while, but she was dealing with it and getting on with things; then she went to this pottery making place—
Guy #2: This is starting to sound like a movie I saw once. <

An excerpt from *Genesis,* Part I of Idolatry…. (SPOILERS FOLLOW) The setting: In the early 5th century, in a small town in the Eastern Roman Empire, a sculptor who is grieving the loss of the woman he loved tries to work on….
* * *
With the distraction of work, life was tolerable enough during the days, but the blackness of the nights was unrelenting. Even worse than the nightmares was the simmering torment of anger, bitterness, and despair that had take

“The story is told in the form of a screenplay, which can seem a bit odd if you have never read one before, which I had not, but it did not take long before the economy with which the form allowed the story to be told took over and pulled me along for the ride….” http://orderfromchaos.black-trovat.net/2014/12/25/mujahid-quent-cordair/

How’s your Tuesday going, in this beautiful land of the free? For one American, who happens to draw cartoons for a living, dawn came today with the knowledge that he’s targeted by men willing to die in the effort to murder him. How’s your Tuesday going, in this beautiful home of the brave? Listen keenly for a few moments to those likely innocent sounds outside. Was that a rake someone dropped? A package being delivered? The sudden firing up of a leaf blower. A car engine getting louder as it

On this Mother’s Day, I offer my short story, “For the Woman Who Has Everything,” from the Lunch Break collection.
“Sarah woke to silence. Thin lines of moonlight lay in diagonals across the floor. She listened for awhile. The only sound was the soft rustle of her hair against the pillow.
“She slid her legs from beneath the layers of blankets and let her feet touch the chill of the hardwood floor. As she walked, a line of moonlight slipped around one ankle, then the other, asc

In support of the cartoonists who exhibited in Texas, my anti-jihadist story “Mujahid” is available for free download on Amazon today and tomorrow, through midnight Pacific, Tuesday May 5th. Freedom of speech must prevail. http://amzn.to/1BHPuhT
http://www.amazon.com/Mujahid-Quent-Cordair-ebook/dp/B00R8QP8NI

Half the town, it seemed, was gathered at the door, peering in, peeking over shoulders, querying, feral rumors slinking around the edges while, closer to the front, more respectable theories were being advanced in hopes of winning a laurel of knowledge for the price of a guess. But no one knew. Mr. Henkle was one of the most dependable, successful men in town, having led the seemingly perfect, enviable life, with the business, the home, the wife, the kids. Never a whisper of trouble. The news

For Valentine’s Day, and particularly for those still looking for their one and only, my story “A Prelude to Pleasure” will be available for free on Amazon all day tomorrow, February 14. Feel free to share the story as a little Valentine’s gift, which you can do directly from the Amazon page @ http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005IDQFCQ
“Before the five-year search there had been fifteen long years of watching and waiting to fall passionately in love the way he had always believed he would, t

In response to the Corinthia Hotel attack in Libya today, I’m making the anti-ISIS story “Mujahid” available for free all day tomorrow, Wednesday, January 28th, starting at midnight Pacific. You are welcome and encouraged to share the “screenplay jihadists will hate and civilized people will love” with all civilized inhabitants of the planet. ISIS must be and will be defeated. The sooner, the better. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00R8QP8NI